Adebola Journal 2
Dr. Oriana Cary cut off her comm. link, puzzled. Adebola had evaded her questions, trying to distract her with other topics, and she didn’t understand why. She had thought the ork an honest person who sometimes dropped by the clinic with information and, more rarely, items scavenged from the dump and repaired. But this time, Oriana believed the ork knew much more than she was saying. The Igbo orks found dead in the Ikege slums worried her. Were the gangs escalating their warfare again? Dead orks, indeed dead street kids and gangers turned up every day, but there was something about those deaths that had worried her colleague, Dr. Haytham. He had told her that he’d heard rumors of Yoruba gloating over the deaths and feared that the Igbo would take revenge in some grisly manner. For him, the number of deaths wasn’t particularly troubling, more the precision and the manner of the deaths. He spoke of the bunch of bodies clustered around a platform, the mark of tires in the mud, signs of other people present who had fled the scene. All the bodies were of the same gang, something that she’d never witnessed. Not that she ever saw the fights themselves, just the aftermaths. She’d learned to trust Dr. Haytham’s instincts on these matters; twice he’d warned her to expect more patients and he’d been right both times. He’d also mentioned a terrifying rumor of a new strain of an unknown virus, something that they had no vaccine for. She gestured to an assistant to bring in the next person for her to vaccinate. At least she was doing something concrete to save these poor people’s lives, protect them from all the threats around them. That was what she’d trained for, and although Dr. Haytham’s eyes rolled whenever she started talking excitedly about all the good they were doing, she was sure he felt the same way. Why else would he have spent twenty years working under such terrible conditions? And tonight, Adebola had offered to meet her for dinner, bringing along a new friend. She was sure she’d manage to wrinkle more information about of her then. A mother carrying her year-old son trudged into the partitioned room and Oriana smiled brightly at the child, spoke briskly to the mother about the vaccination program and soothed the child’s tears with candy after the shot. Another child who would never have to fear the lingering death of VITAS. She waved them away and smiled merrily at the next person to enter, a young boy who defiantly insisted that the doctor must give him the candy first, before he’d accept the shot. ---- By the time evening came, she was more than ready for a break. Adebola had arrived with a box full of medical bioreadouts, most of them old and battered but still valuable for the struggling clinic. They’d need to be calibrated since she’d never convinced the ork of the necessity, but that was an easy task for untrained hands. With her, Oriana was surprised to see a white woman with a sunburnt nose, smelling of sun screen. She got so used to days when every face around her was black that sometimes she surprised herself, looking in the mirror. “This is Dr. Chloe,” said the smiling ork in heavily accented English. “Pleased to meet you,” Oriana replied heartily. “A doctor? Where from?” She slid off her chair. The clinic was too poor to afford metahuman equipment for the most part. They had one troll-sized bed, but nothing sized for dwarfs, even with one on staff. The stranger returned her smile. “I’m not actually a doctor. A nurse, just finished my degree. I’m from the UCAS originally but I’m here more recently from Spain.” “Ah, Spain. How are the hospitals there?” Without waiting for an answer, she continued. “We could always use more hands around here, if you’re interested. People here really need good medical care. It’s rough work, on almost no budget, but it’s so incredibly rewarding, I can’t imagine being as happy anywhere else.” Her eyes appealed earnestly to the nurse and her voice had a rapturous tone. “I’ll keep it in mind,” Chloe replied. “I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to spare from my other work.” Adebola turned to her curiously. “Other work?” Chloe smiled back. “So where are we eating? I’m starved!” On their walk to the little food stand around the corner, Chloe and Oriana talked shop while Adebola wandered behind them, fiddling with a broken comm. link. Once they arrived, Oriana touched Chloe’s arm. “If you aren’t used to the food here, I’d suggest avoiding the stew. It’s good but it can be hard to digest at first. The plaintains are excellent and they have the best chinchin I’ve ever had.” All three ordered, Chloe following Oriana’s advice. The plaintains arrived in a miasma of grease, but were delicious and perfectly crunchy. Oriana put down her spoon and fixed Adebola with a keen look. “So did you hear anything more about those poor dead Igbo?” Adebola's fingers jerked and a fried plantain went flying, smacking a wiry woman in the back of the head, who twisted around to glare at them. Adebola stuttered a nervous apology. Chloe was frowning. “There are dead Igbo? That’s one of the tribes here, right?” Oriana nodded at her. “Some of them can be a little harsh on their women and children. And the street gangs are much worse. Lots of them torture and kill members of other tribes just for fun. Adebola knows; I met her when she dragged herself into the clinic after some of them found her alone.” She hoped this not-so-subtle reminder would make the ork tell her what she knew. Instead, the ork huddled deeper into her chair and gulped down her steaming stew. She sighed. “We do the best we can to stay out of those tribal conflicts but it’s hard when so many people are disabled or killed from them. At least I convinced Adebola not to take revenge on that Igbo boy. What was his name, Ijo? No, Iji, right? Was he leopard clan or tiger?” To her surprised, the ork blanched and darted from the table. She turned her questioning gaze back to Chloe. Strangely, the sun-burnt woman was biting her lip, but when she met Oriana’s eyes, she smiled so serenely that Oriana half-believed she’d imagined the look of anxiety on the woman’s face. “Perhaps the stew disagreed with her,” suggested Chloe calmly. “So tell me more about the vaccination program?”